When GOOD Decepticons go BAD | The loss of themes in EarthSpark

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And this is all thanks to the new team of writers. Seriously, it seems like they DIDN'T watch season 1.

It's honestly kind of disgusting. What kind of lesson is this teaching? To portray Starscream as an abuse victim, then to put his abuser on the "good side". Then they portray Starscream as evil. I have no problem with making Starscream an antagonist. But to make the victim the bad guy, and his abuser a hero, is something that abuse victims are all too familiar with. I can see that season 1 was probably leading up to healing for Starscream and a change/ apology from Megatron, but we didn't really get that. Instead, we watched the abuse victim be villanized. They tried to make an abuse allegory, and then character assassinated the victim.

No one can convince me that the Starscream in Season One, who saved Hashtag AND Twitch from certain doom, who had silly faces on his missiles, is the SAME Starscream in Season Two who murdered children without hesitation. You just can’t. I want to find a better, less pathetic word for the way I feel, but as of now, I feel “heartbroken”.

Season 1 was good but season 2 is unwatchable

Plot Twist: EarthSpark Season 2 was just a nightmare Season 1 Starscream was having. He then wakes up and then begins to fully make amends with the Autobots and Megatron.

It’s lowkey gross to do a 180 with Starscream’s entire characterization in this batch of episodes, especially with how his trauma has affected him has resonated with so many people. True, no victim is perfect. However, what is an issue is how he went from point A to point XYZ. 😭

S1: finally the character growth that tfp Starscream could of had!… S2: the furk is this?

It's fine we'll just pretend season 2 doesn't exist, just like we pretend RID doesn't exist and mercy is the actual sequel😃

Honestly if Earthspark needed a new bad guy, it should've been Prowl. I swear somewhere on the internet someone had managed to find an Earthspark Prowl toy and I was convinced he was going to be the new villain. I think it would've so cool, an AUTOBOT villain showing a different side of the Autobots. The dirty side mentioned in the idw comics and in Transformers Prime. If we got to see good Decepticons then we should've been able to see bad Autobots as well- Imagine what other things you could've introduced with that idea. Honestly I'm so disappointed with the direction they went with this season.

A part of me likes to believe that a reason they did a 180 on Starscream and the other Decepticons is that Hasbro realized they'd have to back pedal and also tackle what exactly made someone like Megatron, WHO STARTED EVERYTHING, have such an easy time gaining the main players favor! If season two had been a flashback episode or having Starscream as a factionless trying to navigate the world while still grappling with his own bad habits, I wouldn't have been upset. Or better yet, if they never touched on the theme of his abuse in the first place. Not everyone feels as passionately about Starscream as some of us do, but it's disgusting that a kids show would make an episode that some kids from troubled backgrounds might ACTUALLY relate to, only to turn around and say "Nah, he's WORST than Megatron actually and deserves to be seen as ONLY a villain while Megatron can walk away with no issues."

This illustrates my problem with Megatron turning good it makes the rest of the decepticons look like irredeemable monsters while allowing the main architect of the movement(in many continuity’s) get a happy ending without much pushback or having said pushback seem like said character being stuck in there ways

The only thing that could save Season Two is that they reveal Starscream was under someone's mind control whether it be Mandroid or someone else like the Quintessons even though the amount of evidence to prove this in Season Two is few to none. I really want Earthspark to be an amazing show like Season One was but they way they are going with the show is like a whole different story. I think this is the first time I've truly been disappointed with a show.

The quality drop was so apparent in even the first episode of the season. I get budget cuts and the animation quality dipping but dear god the writing quality dipped so hard. All the nuances characterizations that made the show so special are just gone. Steve Blum as star scream was peak as always despite the 180 but still.

Starscream not killing babies or Breakdown treating Aftermath like a true son would've given everyone hope. But alas, they don't even allow the formerly-sympathetic bad guys to be good to themselves.

Season 2 absolutely dropped the ball, then set it on fire, and a blew it up. I literally remember crying over the sacrifices of breakdown and tarantulas on my first watch. Breakdown barley got any development in season 2, tarantulas was completely forgotten about. An that’s just those two alone. This show finally portrayed the decepticons with the level of maturity we deserved. And then they took so many steps back by making breakdown seem like a bad guy, making star scream ( a literal victim of abuse with an amazing message of moving on without forgiveness) seem like the bad guy too and we haven’t even mentioned the mishandling of the chaos terrans

I mean, to be fair, Starscream is so synonymous with betrayal that TV Tropes literally calls backstabbing henchmen "The Starscream". The least they could have done was try to make Starscream's treacherous tendencies a consequence of his abuse. That he's been abused for so long that it's messed him up emotionally. And his traitorous chronic backstabbing isn't out of desire for power but rather out of distrust: where he can't help but see kindness as always having an ulterior motive and can't comprehend selfless compassion.

So I’m not the only one who thought that Starscream’s Character arc was trashed.

Season 2 is much a massive disappointment and failure of character writing that it genuinely hurts me and practically removes all hope I had for the show, which sucks, because this show was literally my favorite beforehand

It would've been better if it was shown after a time skip the Decepticons just went bad out of nowhere and a mystery to figure out why they are doing this is the first plot of the season and instead of Robbie being "typical Decepticons being bad" there is shock and hurt with the sudden turn around and betrayal. Also we have yet to get the episode where Megatron talks about why he started the Decepticon cause in the first place. Maybe in the next batch of episodes the Decepticons are corrupted or controlled by something and they weren't in control of their own actions, but that may be slim.